May 07, 2012

Amid recent community discussions about innovation, entrepreneurship and industries targeted for growth, the physical spaces sought by startup companies seem less likely to be found in a traditional office or research park.

University of Virginia Research Park on U.S. Route 29 North

Buildings in close proximity to the University of Virginia or directly on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall appear to be gaining favor.

Michael J. Prichard, chief technology officer and founder of WillowTree Apps, chose the Downtown Mall instead of a traditional office park as the location to grow his business.

“As a tech company, we like to be more in an urban area rather than somewhere removed,” Prichard said. “[The Downtown Mall] is more of a metropolitan, city feel and better for our company culture.”

Prichard elaborated that he didn’t think those experiences would be as likely to happen in an office park.

“Our employees would revolt if we tried to move. It would be pretty hard to pull us out of here,” said Prichard. “For us, it’s just the fact that you would be removed from the center of town. Most of the parks I know are a little bit outside of the city … you have to drive to go anywhere.”

April 23, 2012

Issues of connectivity in downtown Charlottesville remain a hot topic for planners and residents.

Following up on a grassroots design competition for the Belmont Bridge — which brought new ideas for connecting West Main Street, Belmont and the Downtown Mall to the surface — community members gathered recently to hear a panel discussion on the area’s future.

“A community is a place where you encounter differences, and the place tends to socialize you,” said Maurice Cox, former city mayor and University of Virginia professor. “Charlottesville is very fortunate to have a downtown, a former main street, that became an even stronger place for people to encounter each other — the Downtown Mall.”

City Councilor Kathy Galvin compared a healthy community to a healthy ecosystem.

“There’s an ecology of a place,” Galvin said at Tuesday’s discussion, held at The Bridge, Progressive Arts Initiative. “It’s predicated on diversity and I do think that’s something that echoes throughout human history, as well.”

Galvin said diversity and density have enhanced communities throughout history.

“Those cities, those societies, that wound up being innovators were also the most cosmopolitan,” Galvin said. “It’s almost like you need that collision of culture to give you a spark of innovation that gives you the promise of a different day, a different tomorrow.”

As part of the Architecture Week event, panelists and community members also discussed the places where the Downtown Mall has room to improve. Galvin pointed out that there is a disconnect between the people who live downtown and the people who work there.

Oliver Platts-Mills is responsible for the festival’s innovation series, a new grassroots effort to celebrate the area’s talents and brand Charlottesville as the hip place to be an entrepreneur. He and Tom Tom co-founder Paul Beyer both grew up in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area.

“When we started talking to Paul about Tom Tom — this concept of a music festival on the Downtown Mall — Paul realized that he wanted it to be more than a music festival, to include art and some other creative aspects,” Platts-Mills said. “I’m a big proponent of when you want to talk about creativity broadly in Charlottesville, that we ought to include innovation.”

When he’s not planning a major new festival, Platts-Mills is an analyst at Investure, an investment management firm for nonprofits and university endowments. His wife, Natasha Sienitsky, also a Tom Tom organizer, serves on the Charlottesville Planning Commission.

“If you were just to look at music and art, you’d be missing out on a great deal of creative work,” Platts-Mills said. “And I also thought that the synergy between these different things is very, very interesting and exciting.”

Tom Tom kicks off with a block party at the McGuffey Art Center at 5 p.m. today, in honor of founding father Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, and concludes in a gala field day event May 13 at the Ix Building.

The innovation programming includes a series of free talks culminating in a keynote presentation on May 11 and a “locavore expo” on May 12, the same two days as the music portion of Tom Tom.

Every Monday during the festival, four resident entrepreneurs and artists will hold informal talks at the Tom Tom headquarters at 105 South First St. Every Wednesday, the conversation shifts to examples of local innovation with panel discussions at The Gleason at 126 Garrett St.

February 05, 2012

Craig Fabio

Zoning Inspector, City of Charlottesville

Where were you born (and raised, if different)?

I was born and raised in a little cow town between Buffalo and Rochester, New York.

When and why did you move to the Charlottesville/Albemarle area?

While in Charlottesville for a weeklong vacation in summer of 2003 a buddy from college and his special lady friend spent the week selling me on the area. Three months later I packed up and moved here.

What neighborhood do you live in now?

I’ve lived in Belmont for the last five years.

Family (spouse, kids, etc)?

My amazing fiancé and her fat little pug live with me, my little brother lives across town and our mother will be moving here in the fall.

What is your alma mater and when did you graduate?

I graduated from the University of Connecticut in lovely Storrs, Connecticut in the late nineties.

What were you doing before coming to the county government?

Prior to working for the City I managed the Starr Hill Music Hall on West Main Street. Through the years I’ve worked at a big box store, managed a beer, wine and liquor store outside of Boston, spent a summer doing construction, waited tables and tended bar.

Your job title is Zoning Inspector – what, in your own words, would you say you do?

As Zoning Inspector for the City I have many varied responsibilities. Zoning deals with land use. In Charlottesville the Zoning Administrator, Read Brodhead, and I are tasked with interpreting and enforcing the Zoning Ordinance. We deal with where and what you can build, sign allowances, occupancy and even the vendor and the outdoor café spaces on the Downtown Mall.

What is the best part of your job?

The best part of the job is absolutely the people I work with. The fact that every day we get to deal with something different certainly helps. There is no such thing as a routine day.

The most difficult part?

Sometimes the difficult part is trying to explain why something is prohibited. Not everyone will like what we have to say, but they understand why the rules are in place.

How does your job most directly impact the average person?

The great thing about zoning is the fact that it impacts everyone every day, but if we are doing good work no one notices. If we can make sure that there isn’t a negative impact we’re doing something right.

What is the most interesting project or work experience that you’ve had while with the city?

The Downtown Mall re-bricking was a huge project. Trying to figure out how to lay out all of the vendor and outdoor café spaces was a really interesting experience. There are quite a few citizens who have expressed sincere thanks for helping in a situation when they didn’t know where to turn. It’s nice to be able to help out and not always have to deal with enforcement.

What is a little known fact about you?

If I were to divulge a little known fact it would no longer be little known. You have to keep some things under wraps, though in the interwebs era who really has secrets?

What do you do outside of work hours – hobbies, etc?

When I’m not at work I play softball, watch college basketball (2011, certainly not 2012, National Champion UConn Huskies mostly), work on the ever growing list of projects around the house, make dinner for my fiancé, work on teaching stupid tricks to the above mentioned pug and I will soon be venturing into the world of road biking.

February 01, 2012

If you see teams of university students and faculty circling around downtown Charlottesville over the next 10 days, they’d like you to know that they are part of the “Belmont Vortex.”

This whirling academic energy is being directed by Iñaki Alday, the chair of the University of Virginia Department of Architecture. Alday convened the entire school at Culbreth Theater Wednesday and challenged them to find new solutions for the redesign of the city’s Belmont Bridge.

Daniel Bluestone, Architectural Historian, University of VirginiaPhotos by Sabrina Schaeffer, The Daily Progress. Used by permission.

The studio desks and class schedules at Campbell Hall have both been cleared for everyone to participate in a grassroots design contest that the faculty says is unprecedented.

“This is the first time ever that all the designers in the school have worked on one project,” said Elizabeth Meyer, an associate professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture. “This might be a model for how we can rethink how we teach.”

The “Belmont Vortex” design workshops will be led by a visiting professor from Spain, Eduardo Arroyo, described by Meyer as being both “relentlessly pragmatic and visionary.”

“A vortex is a place where many things happen at the same time,” Arroyo said. “I’m here with a mission to make you imagine the city, to use your imagination, your fantasy, and that’s a different field.”

“The county School Board has asked the Board of Supervisors to put forth legislation to change the [composite index] so that money comes out of our school budget and goes into their school budget,” said Councilor Kristin Szakos.

Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, has agreed to sponsor an amendment to the state’s composite index to factor in Albemarle County’s annual revenue sharing payment to the city. That would result in a transfer of more than $2 million to the county.

“I would like us to take a position against that,” Szakos added.

Her request came during a discussion early Tuesday morning of the city’s legislative package in advance of the 2012 session of the General Assembly.

September 09, 2011

About 70 residents gathered at CitySpace on the Downtown Mall Thursday for the latest in a series of town hall meetings held by the Charlottesville City Council.

Charlottesville’s North Downtown and Martha Jefferson neighborhoods were invited to engage councilors and city staff with questions. Residents shared concerns about pedestrian and bicyclist safety and about homeless residents sleeping overnight in their neighborhoods.

Resident Linda Goldstein said drivers not following the traffic laws were putting lives in danger near her home off McIntire Road.

“I am really concerned as a pedestrian and dog walker about people breaking the laws and speeding though our neighborhood,” Goldstein said. “I feel defenseless and scared at times, and there are lots of children and older residents. I’d like to see some constructive things done to protect our neighborhood.”

Andres Clarens, a University of Virginia professor of civil and environmental engineering, challenged the City Council to do more to improve bike safety.

“I am curious to know, above and beyond bike lanes, what the plans are in the city to improve connectivity for bikers?” Clarens asked. “For a city of its size, and given the reputation it has nationally, I think Charlottesville definitely falls short.”

Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris described how the council had formed a pedestrian and bike safety committee and allocated greater funding in that area.

“We have stepped up on the financial side for better connectivity and infrastructure,” Norris said. “I think there is a real heightened interest to take this to another level. We really should have a world class bicycle network here.”

Bernie Martin, a city resident and downtown property manager, moved the town hall conversation to the topic of the city’s homeless population, many of whom he said had told him were not from the area.

“The homeless situation seems to be invading downtown Charlottesville, the Downtown Mall and the North Downtown area where I live,” Martin told the council. “They are an eyesore for the beautiful Downtown Mall. You guys at City Council seem to be encouraging these people to come here. hat’s going on?”

“I am not sure I completely agree with the idea we have been encouraging [homeless] people to come to Charlottesville,” responded Norris. “For a number of years, Charlottesville has been a stopover for people who are traveling around, and I think there are people who prey on the generosity of this community.”

City Manager Maurice Jones encouraged residents to call the police if they encounter a stranger sleeping on their property.

City Councilor Satyendra Huja said the town hall meetings had been very successful this past year.

“Many citizens have come that don’t usually come to City Hall or council meetings,” Huja said. “It helps us hear concerns at the neighborhood level, but we do need to make sure that we are following up on all the questions.”

Galloway Beck, the city’s human resources director, was one of more than a dozen city staff on hand to hear those questions directly.

For Locust Avenue resident Lisa Stewart, the informal nature of the town hall, combined with a chance to have dinner with her two young daughters, made it possible to participate.

“I work part time, so I don’t necessarily want to do meetings after work,” Stewart said. “I really appreciate the format and I would like to get more involved in my neighborhood.”

Thursday’s meeting was the latest in a series of town halls held for the eighteen major neighborhoods across the city. On Sept 22, councilors will attend a town hall for Kellytown/Rose Hill at Burley Middle School. That event will take place from 6 to 8 p.m., and dinner and childcare will be available, according to city officials.

January 12, 2011

For most restaurants on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall, it’s first come first served when it comes to getting a prized table in an outdoor cafe. It turns out, that’s also the rule for property owners seeking to open a mall cafe space of their own.

For six restaurants, getting there first has meant cafes that range from 25 percent to 69 percent larger than their neighbors.’ City staff members are proposing to grandfather the size of these restaurant cafes in ordinance changes coming before the City Council next month. Some business owners are calling for the city to proceed cautiously and consider creating more cafe opportunities.

Jim Tolbert, the city’s director of neighborhood development services, said Tuesday that the current ordinance protects the larger cafes, but his staff wanted to specifically name the restaurants and outline a process for future cafe assignments.

“What we’ve done is lay out some ideas we have for clarifying [the process],” Tolbert said at a question and answer session attended by about 20 mall property owners Tuesday. “Our intent is to go to City Council on February 21st and let them make some decisions.”

In a memo prepared in November, Tolbert outlined the following recommendations:

Allow space adjacent to buildings, as opposed to in the middle of the mall, to be cafes if they do not encroach on the mall’s fire lane.

Identify the six large cafes that will be grandfathered from the current size maximum of 800 square feet. The grandfathered cafes range in size from 1,000 square feet to 1,350 square feet and include Miller’s, Blue Light, Zocolo, Sal’s, Hamilton’s and Rapture.

Specify that sale or closure of the grandfathered restaurants would make their cafe space available again and reduce the size to the current maximum (except for Sal’s and Miller’s, which would have the option to sell to an immediate family member and retain a large cafe).

Specify a process by which new restaurants can claim available cafe space, and allow them to do so without already having an active restaurant.

Craig Fabio, Charlottesville’s zoning inspector, says five or six building owners have sought cafes over the past three years. While space for new cafes on the pedestrian mall is virtually non-existent, city staff hope the ordinance amendments will guide future decisions and clarify who gets what, and when.

“My answer now is, ‘You can’t have one, we are full,’” Fabio said in an interview.

Fabio added that the only space currently available on the mall is between the Timberlake’s Drug Store and the Five Guys restaurant. New mall cafes are limited to 800 square feet.

Joan Fenton, owner of the building at 114 W. Main St., said she was turned down for a cafe space last year. Fenton’s request sparked the city’s review of the existing ordinance.

In an interview, Fenton said she had a tenant ready to open a new restaurant adjacent to Cinema Taco and the Jefferson Theater, but only if cafe space was available.

“I was told there was no room for Cinema Taco to move down,” Fenton said. “I thought that was quite unreasonable as it devalues my property. The last time the ordinance was redone, nobody said you could keep the cafes for eternity.”

Local real estate and music mogul Coran Capshaw previously secured outdoor cafes in the same block for his Blue Light and Cinema Taco restaurants on the mall. Blue Light was granted a larger cafe in a discretionary decision by former City Manager Gary O’Connell, which Tolbert said was to level the playing field with neighboring Zocolo.

The city manager would be removed from the process under the proposed changes.

“[Fenton’s] suggestion was that we go to the three property owners that had space and give it to her restaurant,” Tolbert said. “She appealed to City Council and council asked us to come back with some ideas.”

“Capshaw has every piece of cafe space on the entire block,” Fenton said. “Until 5:30 p.m. there is not a soul sitting in that space. I have a bad retail block because of those cafes.”

Fenton said the cafes in the block could be shared with other restaurants willing to be open for more hours of the day. She says her experience in the neighboring block, where she owns Quilts Unlimited, shows the benefits that also come to retail stores.

“I am near Bizou, Christian’s Pizza, Café Cubano, and the [Marco & Luca] dumpling place,” Fenton said. “When people are out there in the cafes, the block is vibrant and I have people coming in to the store. The restaurants are a huge draw and the cafes are fabulous.”

“This is a long-term economic issue for the city and it is being treated as a zoning problem,” Fenton added. “It should involve the economic development office.”

Overall, the business owners present at Tuesday’s meeting voiced support for the changes.

George Benford, owner of Siips, which has a cafe in the middle of the mall near the Paramount Theater, encouraged a cooperative effort.

“We need to work together as a community and keep bringing people here downtown,” Benford said. “I think you have made a good step in that direction.”

Tolbert said the City Council will hold a public hearing on the ordinance changes on Feb. 21.

June 17, 2010

Preliminary rendering of the Waterhouse projectSource: City of Charlottesville

Four years ago, Charlottesville officials wrestled with a bevy of nine-story building proposals and their impact on the character of downtown. Only the Landmark Hotel began construction, and now its empty skeleton looms incomplete over the Downtown Mall. Another of those projects, Bill Atwood’s Waterhouse on Water Street, shows that economic conditions can also shrink developer visions of a more vertical Charlottesville.

“A small neighborhood, rather than a tower, seems to suit the market…and it brings the building down quite a bit, which from our standpoint, after 5 years, seems to be something that actually does make sense,” said Atwood about his newest proposal.

Architect Bill Atwood began the initial design for his Waterhouse project five years ago with a vision of two mixed-use towers situated between Water Street and South Street.

Just one of many nine-story proposals imagined for the Downtown Mall area, Atwood was able to secure early approval by the Board of Architectural Review (BAR) for his design which incorporated the adaptation of an existing building.

Other high rise projects by Charlottesville real estate developers Coran Capshaw and Keith Woodard have not left the drawing board. Capshaw’s nine-story building is planned for his C & O coal tower property located at 10th Street and Water. Woodard’s project, which would redevelop a block of buildings between Main and Market streets and introduce a tower of offices and residences, has been delayed due to denial of demolition permits by the BAR.

While his project was approved and ready, financial difficulties and a desire to integrate green design practices had Atwood rethinking Waterhouse. He has submitted two additional scaled-down proposals featuring sustainable design elements.

After many suggestions for improvement from the BAR and community members, Atwood presented a third iteration of his Waterhouse project in a preliminary discussion meeting on Tuesday.

In his latest design, Atwood has moved away from a vertical tower in favor of a more horizontal approach, saying that it will be more appealing for businesses which he hopes to recruit as tenants for the space.

“Our experience is that if you are talking to a company that has close to 50,000 square feet [and] you try to stack that group, two things happen; you quickly become not competitive with other jurisdictions in terms of rent structure, but more importantly it becomes a management issue for the user,” Atwood said.

Bill Atwood, Atwood Architects Inc.

Atwood says the new design embraces continuity by filling the entirety of the site and gives tenants ample space on one floor. This design approach would eliminate the need for businesses to occupy multiple floors, which in turn would reduce the need for a tall structure.

Atwood also reevaluated the mixed-use goal for the project and took a more functional attitude towards the design. He said the new building would introduce a customized urban neighborhood or village above the office and retail zone.

Comments from the BAR were in support of the lower, more horizontal approach, yet the board was uncertain about the variety and use of some of the architectural details, such as windows and columns.

“A simplification and unification of all the various elements I think could be useful,” said board member Eryn Brennan.

The board was encouraged by Atwood’s holistic approach to the Waterhouse project yet there was consensus that the range of elements and styles was overwhelming.

“You’ve kept a few pieces that you have struggled over with the former design, and changed what you needed to for the current program, rather than starting again with a fresh eye,” said board member Brian Hogg. “I think that’s undermined your design in a lot of ways.”

Board members felt that Atwood needed to develop the project further, specifically giving more thought to the massing of the structure.

“It looks like three or four different buildings rather than a single unified composition,” said Hogg.

While the BAR requested changes, one South Street property owner, Brent Nelson, commented in full support of the project.

“Whereas this has been a long and arduous journey, I think the benefit here is that we have the best design yet so far for this site,” said Nelson who has been very involved in the design process. “I think the direction in which this is going, the more horizontal direction allows for a more successful incorporation of the existing green building that is to remain.”

Atwood is expected to return to the BAR with a revised plan at a future meeting.

April 13, 2010

In 1974, the Charlottesville City Council made a decision that led to the transformation of the city’s central business district. To generate more business downtown, Council voted to convert East Main Street into a pedestrian mall. The Charlottesville Downtown Mall was dedicated in 1976.

“All of us had expressed interest in the idea of doing something dramatic with downtown,” Gilliam said. “We all knew we needed to do something in the heart of the city to save it.”

The downtown core of the city was losing customers to suburban shopping centers such as the Barracks Road Shopping Center. Even though the city annexed that property in 1963, many city elders had concerns about the future of the central city and its property values.

“There was a legitimate fear that the core of the city was going to end up like… so many cities that had just given way to the suburbs,” Gilliam said.

Though he was a supporter of the idea from the beginning, Gilliam was not permitted to actually vote on the project. He said opponents of the project claimed that he, Fife and fellow Councilor Jill Rinehart all had conflicts of interest because they had associations with banks that had a financial stake in the future of downtown.

“It turned out that if you made more than $5,000 a year and if you worked on a business on the mall, that was one of the things that excluded you,” said Fife, who was vice president of the now-defunct People’s Bank at the time.

Only Barbour and the late Mitchell Van Yahres were able to vote on the issue. Barbour was the first African-American to serve as Mayor.

“This mall belongs to all of us because a black man and a white man [approved it],” Barbour said.

“We pretty well knew it was going to be politically unpopular because big changes always are hard for people to get used to,” Gilliam said. He said the $4.1 million price tag created “heated opposition” to the project, but Council and a special group called the Central City Commission spent a year and a half trying to make sure the mall would be supported by the community.

“We decided that if we were going to do it, we were going to have to do it in a first class way,” Gilliam said.

The firm Lawrence Halprin & Associates was hired to conduct a retreat to help Council and members of the Central City Commission develop a plan to create a new public space for downtown. Gilliam recalled that Halprin said at the time that it would take as long as a decade for the mall to become successful.

At the panel discussion, current Mayor Dave Norris pointed out that many communities that created pedestrian malls later abandoned them. He asked why Charlottesville decided to stick it out, even though the ten-year transition period that Halprin said it would take took a lot longer.

“After we built it, we were stuck [with it],” Barbour said. “We couldn’t take the brakes off and start all over again... [we hoped] that things would improve, and they have.”

Today, Barbour said he would like to see the return of a department store to downtown. However, Gilliam told the audience he doubted that would happen any time soon.